So by this time tomorrow I shall be flying over.. probably somewhere like Wales actually.. on my way to San Francisco!

Leaving on a jet plane indeed.

I'm flying with Virgin Atlantic, and if must be a great place to work because their call staff are the most happy, chatty, and generally friendly people I've spoken to on a helpdesk. That or they have taken to adding Extacsy to the water coolers. Neither would surprise me.

I believe I have a window seat, this pleases me. There's nothing like staring out of the window listening to classical music as you fly over Greenland (and I'll probably just about be able to see Iceland if its clear and I'm on the right side of the plane - I'll wave to you kelvinator and litlaskvis!).

I'll try to update with some photos while I'm out there, but I guarantee nothing. For those of you that remember my absence when Miriam was over here.. yeah, 'nuff said right?

I think Miriam underestimates how excited I'll be just to be there. I mean obviously there's the excitement of seeing her again (yay!) but thats seperate in a way to the excitement of being there. Not more or less, just different.

California, an especially the Bay and the area, is full of places that I have only heard about in songs, tv shows, and movies. The mere concept of being anywhere near Monteray, Santa Cruz.. hell SF itself AND Oakland.. its like how I remember feeling about Disney World when I was a kid - this set of mythical places and people that you were jealous of when other kids said they were going to visit this magical world.*

Now, of cource, the magic of disney has well and truely worn off, become tarnished, and it selling itself in the back streets of LA for crack.. so thats not something that effects me. However I grew up listening to music that spoke about california, seeing movies set there, and watching TV shows that let me glimpse that world - however false it may have been.

In short California is, in a way, my modern Disney World. Its a place that exists purely in my imagination atm and, while the reality is in no way the same as the world in my head, I will still be slighty awed but just being there. I will, in a way, be living in my own head.**

Christmas and New Year in the states is, I'm told, something quite different to what I'm used to as well; you guys just do holidays differently. Its like the comparison of UK and US fast food places - sure the content is the same, but somehow the package is different. False perhaps, but still different.

See you soon.

- Greg Out.

*Which, I may add, I never did visit. I've been to EuroDisney/DisneyLand Paris which is good.. but when I've been it was very wet, very grey, C3P0 spoke French, and the Indiana Jones ride was closed. Not exactly like Florida.**Lets face it, we all know people who do this daily about everything, so its hardly surprising I can do it in this case.

California, an especially the Bay and the area, is full of places that I have only heard about in songs, tv shows, and movies. The mere concept of being anywhere near Monteray, Santa Cruz.. hell SF itself AND Oakland.. its like how I remember feeling about Disney World when I was a kid - this set of mythical places and people that you were jealous of when other kids said they were going to visit this magical world.*

You've sussed out that we feel exactly the same way about London, right? That anything with an accent makes an American swoon because we literally conceive of anything outside the US as another planet?